A Suitcase

Shruti Sonal

He had trouble remembering days now. Sundays often felt like Mondays, and Fridays seemed to merge into Saturdays. That was the only reason he still bought newspapers at sixty: in order to remind himself each morning that a new day had begun, and he had to live it.  

That morning, however, no newspaper was found in Dr Varma's balcony. He looked around for a while, adjusting his spectacles, wondering- for a brief moment- whether he’d lost his vision in the other eye as well. Then, he grunted and called for Chotu. 

"Chotu, has the akhbaar not come today?"

Chotu came running from the other room, rubbing his eyes. He still struggled to wake up in the morning. Sleep often eluded him at night since his move to the big city. 

He shook his head and said, "that boy who sells newspapers has gone back to his village for a few days."

Strange, Dr Varma thought, visibly irritated. Even tiny changes in his routine unsettled him now. He needed the comfort of predictability to go about his life after his wife’s death. 

"What day is it today?"

"It's Tuesday, sahib."

“Okay, then remember. No eggs have to be cooked today. No chicken too.”

Chotu obediently nodded, and went to the kitchen. 

Dr. Varma had tried many times to give up non-vegetarian food altogether since his wife Maya had passed. More and more members of a WhatsApp group that he was a part of had become pure vegetarians in the past few months. They often shared excerpts from religious and scientific texts that spoke about the benefits of leading a lifestyle devoid of meat. But sometimes, he dreamt about the mustard fish curry Maya used to make. In the dream, she always stood draped in a mulmul saree, making a mustard paste in the kitchen, humming an old Bollywood song to herself. However, as soon as he entered, the humming would stop. Her body would stiffen, but she would go on making the paste. She was not good at sharing space. Or maybe she was shy. She hardly spoke of what was going on in her mind, and he was not good at guessing either. The only compliments he knew were: today, the salt is correct. Or, today, the fish tastes really fresh. The memory of that fish, and the way scrambled eggs tasted perfect with butter toast, had kept him from becoming fully vegetarian so far. 

After a few minutes, Chotu came back, with a tray filled with biscuits and a cup of chai. Just as he was about to place the cup on the table, it slipped out of his hands. The china cup, one of the most expensive in the house, fell on the floor and shattered into pieces. The tea was splattered everywhere, and a few drops of the piping hot beverage fell on Dr Varma's hands. Chotu stood in shock, not even knowing how to apologise. The doctor calmy wiped the tea off his hand, and squeezed Chotu's hands. 

"It's okay, we all make mistakes."

Chotu looked stunned. Quietly, he started picking up the broken pieces of the cup from the floor, and went back to the kitchen. Teardrops formed in his eyes. He felt lost. He would perhaps have been more comfortable if sahib had raised his voice at him. Or his hand. 

He knew how to deal with anger, after all. He had dealt with his father's actions throughout the fourteen years of his life. Life would have gone on like that, but one day, two men came to his house and asked for his mother. They spoke in whispers, but Chotu could make out the broad details. A sahib, whose family hailed from the village, had moved to Delhi two decades ago, and made a life for himself. However, he was distraught after losing his wife, and looking for full-time help. The men asked his mother if she would be willing to send Chotu, the eldest son of the family. Without much thinking, his mother told him yes. “I want him to get out of this shit hole,” she said. At night, as she made rotis for the family of six, she ran her hair through Chotu’s hair and broke the news. For the nights that followed, he often dreamt of the big city, and all that it contained. 

As he made a fresh cup of tea, he thought about the sweltering day back in May when he was put in the general compartment of a train, and told he had to get off at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station. The journey had taken over twenty hours, and the train was so crowded that seventeen people sat in a coach meant for six. The odour of sweat mixed with the smells of tiffins that the migrants carried with themselves. In his bag were two pairs of clothes, three notes of hundred rupees each, and an identification card. There was also a piece of paper on which his uncle had written a few phone numbers of his family members. He had been instructed to only call them in case of critical emergencies, and not for futile reasons like missing home. On that day, as he tried very hard to control his tears, he thought about his mother. 

Now he wanted to call her, and ask: how do I respond to love? How do I respond to a man who does not respond to my mistakes with anger? How do I make sense of this quietness? 

However, he knew his mother would have no answers. He pounded the ginger, put it in the kettle, and watched the tea leaves in the water boil. Two teardrops fell in, mixing with the sugar cubes. 

*

Though Chotu had little idea, Dr Varma had not always been this calm. In fact, till just a couple of years ago, he’d been infamous for his temper. However, he was wary of the khadi-clad, activist-type people in the society, who kept a close eye on what was happening behind closed doors. Once, they had gotten a good man arrested on the charges of slapping his wife. The poor guy’s mother had to fly in from Kolkata in order to bail him out. A few months later- on the advice of their parents- the couple had a baby. Another time, it was the activists who had recorded a video of the mob, as it interrupted men performing namaz inside the society premises. It had gone viral online, and an FIR was registered against the alleged miscreants. They were given bail within twenty-four hours, but that's a different story. Over the years, the society members had banded together to ‘protect their own’, and ignored what the activists had to say. Their numbers in the residential committee too had dwindled, and only one of them remained on the board. However, Dr Varma could not stop thinking about them in his mind. One thought led to another, and he felt paranoid. 

Ever since Chotu had arrived, Dr Varma felt that they had started keeping a watch on him. He was sure that someone had tipped them off. Poverty made things murky, and morality often bowed down to it. Dr Varma had told the society’s representatives that Chotu was the son of a distant brother who wasted his life drinking too much rum back in the village, and had been sent to Delhi to study and become a better man. Most of the representatives- upper-caste males themselves - had not objected, or given much thought to it. Yet, of late, Dr Varma felt like he was being tracked. More than anything else, he knew that if he committed violence against Chotu, the news would spread like wildfire. While members of the society might not do anything about it, he knew that it would be hard to find a good servant after that. All of them gossiped with each other, and often blew things out of proportion. He had also read newspaper reports where some of them even went to NGOs, and asked them for help to press charges. Like many, it was fear that had guided his actions, not goodness of the heart. So, he stayed quiet, and decided to keep his head low. He also asked Chotu to stay away from the servants and their kids in other homes. 

Naively, Chotu often mistook the calculated quietness as Dr Varma’s response to grief. He had come to the house three months after the death. On many mornings, he saw Dr Varma sobbing quietly. Sometimes, Dr Varma narrated stories of how the marriage took place. 

“It wasn’t like the marriages of today, where the boy and girl do everything and tell their parents. We would only look at photographs of girls shortlisted by our parents. Maya was the most beautiful of them all, so I picked her,” he recalled. Then, he added, “my parents were disappointed though, because her family was giving us the least dowry.” 

From what he could piece together, Chotu was surprised how similar the marriage sounded to the ones that took place in his village, with emphasis on astronomical charts, ticking of caste boxes, and money. It didn’t have any of the lofty claims that Chotu had seen in a couple of Bollywood movies. He recalled one in which Shah Rukh Khan stayed in a prison for twenty-two years to protect his love. So childish, he thought to himself. Yet, despite the realities, in a nostalgia-induced glow, the memories with Maya seemed more romantic to Dr Varma than ever before. The anecdotes soon became longer, and though Chotu struggled to pay attention, he always sat on the floor, pretending to be interested. 

Over time, Chotu also began to understand the other things that Dr Varma’s wife had left behind. Their unmarried daughter, Sneha didi, who was in her late 30s, lived in the same house. However, Chotu had never seen her speak to her father. In fact, her presence in the house was almost ghostly: she hardly ever came out of her room, except to get snacks from the kitchen in the middle of the night. While Chotu did not know what had caused the distance between sahib and didi, or why she was not married, he knew that she was not completely healthy. Once every two weeks, a doctor would also come to the house, close the door, and speak to didi for a while. After she left, Chotu would be sent to the nearby pharmacy to buy new medicines, carefully written down by the doctor on a piece of paper. While their names were complicated to remember, with time, he memorised the packaging of the pills. He was, after all, in charge of giving her the prescribed medicines at regular intervals. 

Apart from Sneha didi, there was another topic of conversation riddled with mystery: a suitcase filled with cash. Chotu had first heard about it when Dr Varma’s younger brother came to town for a few days. As he made dinner, they spoke in whispers in the hall, which was right next to the kitchen. Although Chotu couldn’t make out the details, or where it was, he knew two things: it belonged to Dr Varma’s wife, and it was there somewhere in the house itself. 

Over the next few months, chatter around it was usually avoided in Chotu’s presence. Yet, details continued to slip out during phone calls. Dr Varma was clueless about how his wife had managed to save money, and hide it from him. It puzzled him. Maya, after all, had been a homemaker all her life. And she had never dropped any hint of saving - for what? Even when he’d been jobless for months, she had not once mentioned the money. It sent him down a spiral: what else had she hidden from him? What other secrets would he discover after her death? What would he never know?  Yet, amidst his confusion, one thing was clear - the suitcase was still in the house, and Dr Varma was reluctant to deposit the cash in a bank. A few days back, he had asked Chotu to go to the market and buy a ‘strong’ lock- the ones which came with a passcode. That day, Chotu saw the suitcase for the first time. 

Dr Varma’s reluctance was tested when a robbery occurred in the society. On the fourth floor of the building, a food delivery boy was accused of stealing lakhs from the house of an old couple. After that, Dr Varma’s neighbour came over one day, and advised him to not keep cash in the house. “Can’t trust anybody these days,” he said, glancing at Chotu.

The next day, Dr Varma decided to schedule a visit to the bank. However, he had woken up with a terrible headache, which made him irritable. As he was principally against taking pills at the start of a new day, he decided to get out of bed. Perhaps tea would do the trick, he convinced himself, as tea lovers often did in the country. He asked Chotu to make a cup of tea more kadak than usual. 

“But there’s no ginger in the house, sahib,” Chotu replied. 

What a terrible start to the day, Dr Varma sighed. He nonetheless had a cup of ginger-less tea, showered and changed into a formal shirt. Then, he picked up the suitcase, checking that the lock was in place. The bank was a short walk away from his house, but he took the longer route. Despite all that had changed in Dilli over the years, he still found winter mornings beautiful. The way the sun struggled to break in from the fog filled him with marvel. So did the chill in the air, which made him feel more alive. 

At the bank, the security guard greeted him humbly. He’d been going to that branch for a decade now, and most of the employees knew him. He went to the counter, and told one of them that he was here to deposit cash. The employees told him about a bunch of different ways in which he could invest it, but he decided to simply put it in a locker. He filled a form, and waited for the bureaucracy to do its job. Gone were the days when he'd have to line up inside banks for hours to get simple tasks done. The government he had voted for had made everything smoother. It had made everything digital too. However, in the case of money, Dr Varma did not trust apps. He wanted to see, touch, and feel the crisp notes in his hands. 

“What would be the total amount, sir?” one of the employees asked. 

“It should be about three lakh seventy thousand,” replied Dr Varma, having counted it carefully when he first found the suitcase. 

The employee then counted it himself, and looked puzzled. “There’s only one lakh and fifteen thousand in this, sir.”

Dr Varma struggled to hide the shock on his face. After several rounds of recounting, the figure still stood at one lakh and fifteen thousand. “There must have been some mistake,” he mumbled, and stepped out of the bank. 

While on most other days, he would have walked back, the anxiety stopped his legs from moving. He booked a cab on his phone, and got into the first one which accepted his ride. On the radio, Mohammed Rafi’s ‘Dard-e-Dil’ played, one of his favourites. Yet, the situation wasn’t conducive to enjoying the song. 

"Are you a Rafi fan sir?", asked the cab driver.  

“Keep quiet and focus on the road,” Dr Varma replied curtly.

While getting out of the cab, he read that the driver’s name was Asim. He gave him a one-star rating, and walked rapidly to the lift. 

Once home, Dr Varma cleaned himself, popped a Disprin and sat still for a minute. His heart was beating so fast that he thought it would fall out of his body. He put his head in his palms, and tried to get his thoughts in place. Then, he frantically searched the whole house for the missing cash: the wardrobes, the window sills, the book shelves. Everything was empty. 

Just then, the doorbell rang. He rushed towards it. It was Chotu, carrying a bunch of grocery bags in his bony hands. 

“Where were you?” Dr Varma asked. 

“You had only asked me to go to the market and buy vegetables for the week.”

Right. He was the one who had done that. He asked Chotu to keep the bags on the floor, and began searching him from head to toe. He found a total of thirty-seven rupees in his pockets. 

“What is this?”

Fear imprinted itself on Chotu’s face. 

“It is the change that the shopkeeper gave me. I was about to give it to you only,” he replied, as sincerely as he could. 

“About to? About to, is it?” Dr Varma retorted, his voice growing in rage. 

He continued, “Where did you put the money you stole? Tell me!” 

Chotu looked puzzled. 

“This is… all I have.”

Dr Varma grabbed him by his hands and dragged him to the room where the suitcase was kept. 

“This- there was more money in this. It’s gone. You knew about the lock, about this suitcase. Now tell me, where is the money, you thief?”

Chotu’s eyes looked blank. He remained quiet for a while, but he knew the accusations wouldn’t end soon. Then, he spoke. 

“You don’t even remember what day of the week it is. How are you so sure that I am the one…?”

Slap. One slap. Two slap. Three slaps. 

“How dare you speak to me like that, you chamar?” Dr Varma thundered. 

The word. Chotu had heard it multiple times before, but never thought he would be called that in this house. It stung more than the slaps. He stood trembling, and did not speak again. Instead, he went to his room, and called his mother. A voice at the other end said, the validity of your talk time is over.

*

Dr Varma couldn't go to the police and file a complaint against Chotu, afraid they’d enquire why he was hired in the first place. However, an officer who was his college batchmate was kind enough to offer to take Chotu to the station to ‘teach a lesson’. 

“A few blows and he will spit out the truth,” he said. 

Chotu came back from the station with multiple bruises. He only repeated that he had no idea where the cash was, and he had nothing to do with it. 

The news, however, travelled. Some neighbours got a hint that Chotu had been physically assaulted. One day, another asked Dr Varma in the lift, “where’s Chotu? Haven’t seen him for a few days.” The same day, as he picked up the newspaper to read, a small clipping on the front page read “Noida couple booked for assaulting minor”. 

As a result, Dr Varma, in a state of panic, booked his train ticket back to his village. Chotu left, as quietly as he had come. 

After things had quietened, a couple of days later, Dr Varma decided to take a long nap. When he woke up, a blurry memory came back to him. It couldn’t be! He frantically went to Sneha’s room, and knocked on her door. 

“Did I keep some cash here a few weeks back?”, he asked. 

Sneha shrugged. 

Then, he remembered something. He took out the clothes from her wardrobe, nearly emptying the middle shelf. At the back was a wooden locker, hidden from public view. It’s where Maya used to keep her documents and jewellery. He rushed back to his room, and got the key. As he opened the locker with trembling hands, he gasped. There it was! The missing cash. Dr Varma himself had kept some of it there, in order to avoid storing the whole amount in one place. He couldn’t believe how his own memory had failed him. Yet, he didn’t dwell on it further. Instead, he switched on the television. A news anchor on the television yelled from the screens: the bulldozer has brought justice, once again! 

He thought about Chotu, but only fleetingly. There was nothing to be done now. He was a human, he told himself, and human memory errs all the time. A part of him wondered whether he should pick up the phone and inform Chotu’s parents that their son was innocent. However, after scrolling through his contact log for several minutes, Dr Varma dialled his neighbour instead, to ask whether the servant hired there would be free to work in his house too.  By then, Chotu was on another train. This time, it took him away from Dilli, and its sahibs. This time, it took him home. 

***

About the Author

Shruti Sonal is a Delhi-based writer, poet and journalist who loves to tell stories in all their forms. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies, including  Penguin India's "Ninety-Seven Poems", HarperCollins' "The World That Belongs To Us", and an upcoming collection of food writing by the Alipore Post. She has written for publications such as Times of India, Scroll, The Wire, The Hindu, Film Companion and more. Her poetry book 'In Which Language Do I Remember You?' is going to be published soon. 'Snow', a short revolving around loss and films, is going to be featured in Kitaab's Best Asian Fiction of 2023. She's also a Writers Ink Screenwriting Fellow for 2023-24 and is working on her first feature film screenplay as a part of it.